从合作原则看英语委婉语的使用

　　Among the euphemisms used in press conferences, we maystill find that some of the euphemisms can be regarded as aspecial case that violate both the Quality Maxim and theQuantity Maxim etc.. Hence in a broad sense we may say thateuphemisms that violate the Quality Maxim can also be regardedas a special case that violate the Quantity Maxim because thetwo maxims are closely related. If a euphemism violatesQuality Maxim, it also violates Quantity Maxim to a certainextent. For example, the euphemisms like “possible movement”

　　for “possible military attack” or “possible war”; “brought theworld together” mainly refers to those countries led by theUSA. Hence from this point of view we may that euphemisms like“possible movement”, “brought the world together” etc. notonly violate the Quality Maxim but also violate the QuantityMaxim because to a certain extent they distort the facts andprovide less information than people actually need.

　　5.3 Euphemisms and the Relation MaximAs we mentioned before that the Maxim of Relation refersto “Be relevant” and violation of Relation Maxim means thatthe utterance of a speaker is irrelevant to the conversationor the specific context for some reasons or some purposes.

　　Sometimes we may find English euphemisms are to use irrelevantutterances on the surface to express something that thespeakers want to say and cannot say. In fact the impliedmeaning of the utterances is relevant partially because theformation of English euphemisms abides these formativeprinciples like pleasant-sound principle etc.. For example,(7) "I approached her very hesitatly.

　　"Want to come and play?"Piquette looked at me with a sudduen flash of scorn.

　　"I ain't a kid," she said.

　　Wounded, I stamped angrily away..."[27]